


Most Beautiful Their Colors Show

by purple_bookcover



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Greek Mythology - Freeform, Hero and Leander, Mythology - Freeform, Nonbinary Character, Other, nonbinary suga, tragic ending in the style of greek myths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:47:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26603182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_bookcover/pseuds/purple_bookcover
Summary: Suga serves their goddess faithfully by day, yet at night Daichi swims to them, crossing the sea so both of them might break their oaths. They both know it is wrong, but neither has the will to end it. If only the gods might forgive them.A short story of lust and tragedy and the fickle will of the gods.Based off the story of Hero and Leander.
Relationships: Sawamura Daichi/Sugawara Koushi
Kudos: 6





	Most Beautiful Their Colors Show

**Author's Note:**

> This is for DaiSuga Week, Day 3: Mythology. I really liked the story of Hero and Leander. It is tragic and lovely. I hope I was able to translate it well for this.

The light in the beacon tower paints their bodies in dripping, crashing flame. 

“You should not have come here,” Suga says. 

“I know,” Daichi says. 

It is some time before Daichi will use his mouth for words again. Suga wants to press the point, wants to urge him to stop coming here, showing up sopping wet, exhausted and panting and battered by the sea, smelling of salt water and the sand clinging to the bottoms of his feet. But they do not. They can not. Daichi’s mouth is heating their skin in bursts and patches. Suga can do little but gasp as Daichi paints a lusty quilt down their chest.

Daichi drops to his knees. 

Later, they are both exhausted, both dreamy and delirious. Later, Suga cleans salt water off Daichi’s skin, wrings it out of his hair. It’s wasted effort. They both know it, but Daichi lets Suga finish all the same. 

The light in the beacon tower sways. Gently tonight, but Suga fears a night when the gusts strengthen, when the waves beating against the tower rage and pound. 

They rise, restless, and pace to the window. The sand is so very far below. The sea is absorbed into the night, a dark hiss beneath the cloak of dusk. Somewhere far, far away there is land. 

Daichi steps up behind Suga, kissing their shoulders, running calloused hands over their skin. 

“You shouldn’t come here anymore,” Suga says.

“I know,” Daichi says. His mouth lingers against Suga’s shoulder. 

“We shouldn’t do this,” Suga says. “It can’t last.”

“Shh,” Daichi says. He wraps his arms around Suga, pulling them back against his chest. “We have done it and that’s all there is to it.”

“I belong here,” Suga says. “I swore my life to the goddess.” 

“And I swore my life to you,” Daichi says. “So we are both exactly where we mean to be.”

Yet when heat melts the edge off the night, purple crawling into the sky, Daichi leaves, diving back into the salt water and swimming toward the land.

#

Suga winds down their tower carrying a caged dove. The creature does not squawk or beat its wings. Suga has given it all due rites; it comprehends its fate.

Outside the tower, Suga unsheathes the little blade ever at their hip. They are efficient and merciful killing the dove, collecting its blood, purifying their tower as sunlight glints off the sea, glaring at Suga’s sins. Then they offer the dove to the water. It sinks and sinks and vanishes into inky depths. Perhaps, in this way, Suga appeases two gods. 

Suga bathes in clean water, not salt. They light the candles, dunk their head, recite the prayers, offer the blemishes and love bites littering their body as testament to their atonement. 

Even washed clean, the marks left by Daichi’s mouth do not fade entirely.

#

“You should not have come here,” Suga says.

Daichi does not bother responding. He kisses down Suga’s neck, retracing a path he’d laid himself. He smells like saltwater and sand, the course grains grating against Suga’s skin. Daichi grinds against Suga, then inside them. 

Part of Suga wonders if they might scrub each other away like this, sand each other down to flecks. Every night, they crash into each other like waves against stony shores, but Suga does not know what part they play, whether they are the waves beating inexorably, towed by gravity, or the stones helplessly breaking under the assault. 

Yet as they crest, as the heat builds to unbearable temperatures within Suga, they feel full and complete rather than brittle and scattered. And then it crashes and the warmth is inside them and running down their leg and splattered on their stomach and Suga knows they will sacrifice another dove, a dozen more doves, and it will never be enough to wash them clean.

#

Suga bathes in the sea, letting the salt cling to their skin. They wade in naked and walk until they are fully submerged.

When they resurface for air, a wave knocks them back under. The placid sea turns turbulent, tossing Suga around, tumbling them back to shore.

Suga lays in the sand, sticky with salt, as the water recedes, so calm and smooth again that it might be glass. Whatever violence expelled Suga, it was temporary and localized. 

Suga stumbles to their feet, trembling, and runs into their tower.

#

The light in the beacon tower flickers under the assault from the wind whipping off the water. Suga cups their hands around the flame, trying to keep that light alive, trying to protect it from the lashing of the storm outside their window.

It is not just the wind. The waves are worse, crashing and booming, thundering as they pound against the tower. 

Suga abandons the flame – what good can it do in the midst of this? – and goes to the window, flinging open the shutters. The storm gusts inside, wind scratching Suga’s skin like raking nails. The waves claw their way up the tower. There is no sand beneath the tower anymore; there is no shore. There is only the sea, enraged and howling, dashing itself against the stone. 

He is out there. Suga is sure. Daichi is out there, swimming in those waves. He is crossing the sea as he does every night, crossing it to see Suga, to climb this tower so they might abandon their oaths and sin again. 

And Suga is waiting.

They could claim Daichi’s visits were a surprise. They could pretend each one was unplanned and startling. But the sea has tasted them. There is no purpose in lying any longer. 

Suga crawls onto the sill of the window, clinging to the edge as they emerge into the growling, snapping maw of the storm. The wind tears at their clothes, their hair, their skin. It extinguishes the light. A wave rocks the tower, the spray leaping up to fleck Suga’s skin. Cold, so incredibly cold. He must be cold, Suga realizes. Cold and desperate and alone in all this wailing indifference. 

Suga cannot bear it. They have failed in their duties and desecrated their oath, but they can be true to him. 

They let go and fall to the judgment of the sea, a sea that will grasp and grab, towing them down, down, down. A sea that will deposit Suga upon the sand almost gently, almost mournfully, laying them beside their lover. A sea that will wash them clean at the last.

#

_Neptune for pity in his arms did take them,  
Flung them into the air, and did awake them  
Like two sweet birds, surnam’d th’ Acanthides,  
Which we call Thistle-warps, that near no seas  
Dare ever come, but still in couples fly,  
And feed on thistle-tops, to testify  
The hardness of their first life in their last;  
The first, in thorns of love, that sorrows past:_

_And so most beautiful their colours show_

\- Hero and Leander, The Sixth Sestiad, by Christopher Marlowe

**Author's Note:**

> The poem is from [Hero and Leander, The Sixth Sestiad](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21262/21262-h/21262-h.htm#hero), by Christopher Marlowe (hear a recitation of the full poem [here](https://librivox.org/hero-and-leander-by-christopher-marlowe-and-george-chapman/)!)
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/purplebookcover) (18+ please).
> 
> I respond to every comment. Thank you, friends!


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